


All Wrong

by gloss



Series: Cure for Pain [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Poe lives to serve, post-TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 08:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6277708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hole Han left is enormous, and sharp.</p>
<p>[Assumes past relationships listed in the tags, but can be read as a gen standalone.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Wrong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aphrodite_mine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/gifts).



> _And when she laughs I travel back in time/Something flips the switch and I collapse inside._ [Title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlAWsVXKzq8) from Morphine.
> 
> This fic_promptly [prompt](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/417070.html?thread=13386030#cmt13386030) — Any, any, "The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor" — helped me get started.

At the end of first watch, Poe waits for her just outside the entrance to her quarters. All dressed up and scrubbed pink like an Academy grub: he wears his dress uniform, starched within a centimeter of its life, his hair is still damp, combed back, and his face is freshly, stingingly, shaved. She doesn't see him as she nears; her head is down as she listens to the chattering droid review her agenda in minute detail. 

In fact, the droid notices him first. It pulls up short, waving him away with that red hand as if he's a particularly persistent swamp dragon. "I'm most sorry, Commander Dameron, but the general simply cannot be distracted at this juncture!"

She stops the droid with a light touch to its elbow joint. Her voice is every bit as hoarse as it has been recently, perhaps even rougher. It's not getting any better. "Threepio, it's fine."

"I really must insist, General Organa, that this sort of interruption is _not_ fine. It is quite far from fine, as a matter of fact."

"Poe," she says, with real warmth and relief. She takes the arm he offers, slipping her own through, and steers him down the path that runs behind her residence. "How can I help you?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," he says. "Damn. Now I have to come up with a whole new line."

"Far from fine!" Threepio shouts after them. "The agenda is very clear!"

"Thank you," she murmurs when they're out of earshot. She squeezes his arm for emphasis.

"Any time," he replies. "You know you could just tweak the programming on him. Just enough so --"

"Eh," Leia says. They're coming to the back of her small garden. The space is plain, almost unadorned, just a single piece of Naboovian sculpture and neat round beds of Alderaanian climbing flowers. "It's been so long. Feels cruel to change him now."

Cruel to whom, she doesn't say. They have slowed to a stop, past the garden now and at the edge of the woods where the path peters out. They could turn back, or turn left toward the barracks and mess. Or go right to the hangars.

"I've got a supply run to Remor," Poe says, stroking the back of her hand but looking up into the forest. "Maybe you want to come along?"

She elbows him lightly. " _That's_ the line you came up with? All this extra time, and that's the best you can do?"

"I don't think it's my _best_ , no," he says. "Far from it. But it's got a kind of rough and ready charm, right? Disarmingly direct, even."

"Or clunky," she suggests. "Clumsy, certainly."

He nods, frowning a bit, brows knitting together. "Thanks. I'll do better next time."

She pats his hand. "I believe in you."

"Excellent," he says, grinning now, "how could I possibly fail, then?"

A flock of cumular birds breaks from the forest canopy, calling shrilly. When they turn as one, their blue wings flash white, turn the sky ivory.

"You didn't get this dressed up to make a supply run," she says.

"No," he admits and works his finger into his collar to get a little breathing room. "Got dressed up for you."

She turns and moves a few steps away, her hands clasped behind her back. The forest whispers above them. It rained last night, so the leaves are heavier, their song slower, than usual. Her head is tilted back; a few fine hairs escape from the heavy braid wrapped around her skull and dance in the air.

After a few moments, she turns back to him, the ghost of a smile on her lips. "Well, then, shall we get going? I am a busy woman, after all."

*

"Remind me to chide Admiral Statura," she says when the small repurposed shuttle has lifted off and cleared D'Qar's atmosphere and its debris ring. "One of our best pilots should not be assigned routine supply runs."

Poe double-checks the nav data from BB-8 against the shuttle's own, then confirms course. " _One_ of the best?"

In the co-pilot's seat, nearly swallowed up by it, Leia raises an eyebrow. "Are you really interested in flyboy dickswinging?"

"Not Statura's fault, anyway," Poe continues. Out the viewport, D'Qar dwindles to a small green speck, then flickers out of sight. They pass the next moon out, a sad, lumpy affair like old porridge, and then they hit that stuttering pause just before hyperspace, the one that makes time teeter and flail. "I requested the run. And you know I'm _always_ up for some dickswinging."

She's laughing as they make the jump, reaching over to squeeze his hand. Then she's holding on, her laughter coming as bright and fast as the stars themselves, her nails in his skin.

When they ease back out of hyperspace, Leia composes herself. It's a quiet, subtle ritual he'd already seen countless times before he realized what it was. She touches her hair with her fingertips, closes her eyes three times, then exhales, straightens her shoulders, and meets the gaze of whoever is waiting for her.

There's only Poe here, however. Even BB-8 is gone, back in the hold making final cargo calculations. Just Poe, so he knows the ritual isn't for him. He doesn't give a damn how composed or disheveled she is. (To be honest, of course he does _care_ , and she is glorious when she's disheveled, but his concern isn't anything he can quite name or comfortably share.)

It's for her. 

They're headed for the innermost planet in this system, hopping from moon to moon. This close, the space surrounding each is tinged purple. The albedo of each grows, brightening as they near their destination, increasing in radiance like an orchestral movement builds in tension.

Poe brings the shuttle in to port with a minimum of fuss. The authorities are expecting them and traffic has been exceptionally light since the loss of Hosnian Prime.

"That was easy," Leia observes as she unbuckles and stands. She stretches at the waist, wincing slightly before covering the expression with her diplomat's smile. "I shouldn't be surprised that most arrivals _don't_ necessitate subterfuge and/or ion cannon blasts. And yet I so often am. Still."

"Not all of us can make a great entrance," he replies. "Best not to try to compete with the masters."

She shakes her head gently, fond and impatient in equal measure. 

They're talking, as they always have, _around_ Solo. Their conversation has to accommodate him, and neither would have it any other way, as awkward as this can be, and sad, and somehow lonely. He is not a man to be displaced, though his absence, these days, is that much sharper and darker. You could cut yourself on the hole he left; if Poe is sliced up, Leia must be in ribbons.

He waits for her to pass, then follows her out of the cockpit and down into the exit to the gantry. She touches her hair again before the air lock eases and the clamor of port noise reaches them.

"Let me," Poe says.

She turns, smoothly, hiding what surprise, if any, she might feel.

"Let you...?" 

He touches her braids, smoothes one fingertip over one eyebrow, then the other, then tips up her chin. "There."

She opens her eyes. 

Her skin is warm to the touch, soft as ever, but her gaze is hollow. Far away.

Poe opens the hatch and stands aside so she may pass.

*

He sees to the local stevedore crew, delegating decisions to BB-8, who trills confidently, then signs off on the port documents. When he's finished, he stands outside the port offices, hands in his pockets, looking for her.

Then he remembers that this is his dress uniform and removes his hands from the pockets.

A bitterly cold wind is kicking up, bringing stone-colored clouds to pile on the horizon. Remor City is set on a high, cold desert plateau; there is nothing of interest unless one is really excited by sand, grit, or dry, crumbly snow pellets. All three look roughly alike, pale and desiccated, various shades of white, beige, gray that combine into a single mottled absence of color.

Poe sets off to find Leia. There aren't that many places she could be, particularly if she isn't interested in a municipal museum of electrification projects or the provincial prison. Still, to be sure and thorough, he does check there, as well as the three hostels, one very unsanitary cantina, and a tourist bureau that is little more than a booth with tattered awning that flaps in the wind.

When he reaches to the chophouse at the far end of the avenue, Poe has ice pellets in his hair, his jacket collar turned up around his jaw, and raw, red windburn across his nose and cheeks.

"And yet," Leia observes, gesturing to him to take a seat on the over-upholstered bench next to her. "You make it look rakish rather than miserable."

Poe rubs his palms together briskly, breathes on them, then slaps his cheeks. "Trust me, it feels miserable."

"Have you eaten?" she asks.

All right, so they're going to act as if she didn't disappear and he didn't spend over an hour looking for her. Poe shakes his head.

"Here." She pushes a plate of brown stew toward him. "I can't finish this."

"You haven't even started it," he points out.

She cuts him a _look_.

He shrugs. "Well, you haven't."

"If you start lecturing me about taking care of myself, keeping up my strength, all that nonsense --"

"Nope," Poe says and shovels in a few bites of stew. It's actually quite good, peppery and steaming hot. He swallows, wipes his mouth, and adds, "wouldn't dream of it."

"And _that_ ," she says, slipping closer to him to put her arm around his waist and rest her cheek against his shoulder, "is why you're my favorite."

"One of your favorites," he says.

"No." Her gaze flickers up toward him, dark and warm and soft under her lashes. Fine lines radiate out from her eyes, cascade from her mouth, and he thinks, too, of the old stretch marks gone silver and silky across her abdomen. Lifelong pains and longlasting survival.

He finishes his stew as quickly as he can, careful not to dislodge her, half-anxiously fantasizing that maybe they could just stay like this. Leaning against each other, his arm around her now, so close that his breath disturbs the silver hair escaping her braid.

He drops a kiss on the crown of her head, feeling the heat of her scalp against his lips and the shift of her body closer to his. Her hand curls into his as he leaves his mouth there, prolonging the kiss into something else, something almost permanent.

"I keep waiting for him to pop up and say something repulsive and lascivious," she murmurs. Dropping her voice, she tries, "C'mon, kid, give it to her. Really make her feel it."

"Guess I'm just a third wheel," Poe says, trying to recover the cadence of Solo's delivery, that strange, endearing mix of sarcastic and sullen, hopeful and derisive. "I'll just see m'self out, your most high exalted royaltyness."

She's laughing again, low and soft, shaking a little. 

"No one's listening to me, so I'm going to stomp my feet and sulk like a youngling until I get the respect I'm half-convinced I deserve!"

"Dunno what you expected, kiddo, but I'm an open datapad."

"Idiot," she says, roughly, even more hoarsely than usual.

He tightens his hold when the laughter slips into tears. Just like that, the glee drops away and they're both left with tight throats, stinging eyes.

She shudders against him, twisting close, face buried against his ribs.

"It's safe here," he tells her. He doesn't _need_ to; she's an intelligent woman. But it can't hurt for her to hear it, too. "Let it out."

"I don't cry," she tells him, plain outright lying now. Her eyes are stained bright red, tears streak her cheeks, and when she sniffles, the noise is wet and painful. "It's simply not done."

"Interesting," he replies, handing her his handkerchief. He always wondered why the dress uniform came with two handkerchiefs as standard accessories; now he knows. Grief. Death's always right here. That's what the military _does_. "Maybe it's time to try something new."

"I'll consider it," she says, shoulders heaving suddenly and fresh tears welling.

"Maybe refer it to committee first?"

"Probably best to be cautious, yes," she says.

Her braid is now more loose than composed; her cheeks are wet and splotchy, her eyes narrow and lashes slicked with tears. 

When she peers at him, she looks so tired, so sad, that Poe can't think. He tries, he does, but there aren't words coming. There's nothing to say. He holds her again and she's almost nothing in his arms, bird-thin bones and quiet sobs.

The hell of it all is that this _will_ pass, and the hole, the distance in time and space, will just grow bigger.


End file.
